No. 200.] 233 



" The hills 

 Rock ribbed and ancient as the sun — the vales 

 Stretching in pensive quietness between 



The venerable woods — rivers that move "^ 



In majesty, and the complaining brooks 

 That make the meadows green; and, poured round all, 

 Old ocean's gray and melancholy waste." 



Here are pictures which Zimmerman may not equal. But more 

 exquisite than these is this machine — the human hand — the suppHani 

 servant of the mind ! 



But it is the mechanic arts, as encouraged by the demands of the 

 farmer, the manufacturer, and the merchant, that interest us now. 

 The machine is the instrument with which the art is carried on. It is 

 itself a work of art, contrived to increase human power and enlarge its 

 sphere of action. By its aid a single man works with an hundred 

 hands, and so becomes fifty men, and ceases to be one. But if me- 

 chanic arts are not fostered, inventive skill would be unknown, for its 

 want would not be felt. Thought is the parent of invention — not 

 necessity. Necessity 'awakens thought; and so it will be found 

 that in those arts which have not been successfully pursued, for lack 

 of proper instruments, machines, tools, the want has aroused thought, 

 and the needed invention has followed. At the close of an interesting 

 report made by Mr. Charles M. Keller to the late Superintendent of Pa- 

 tents, this fact is stated, that "those branches of the arts which have 

 been in a prosperous condition during the past two years, a§ for in- 

 stance cotton manufactures, have received a smaller number of contri- 

 butions from inventors, than those which have been in a depressed 

 state, as civil engineering." 



In proportion, then — and here h the point which I would now es- 

 tablish — as the need is felt of improved machinery, inventive skill is 

 developed and mechanic arts advance ; and that necessity is recogniz- 

 ed in ihe precise proportion that commerce and those associate pur- 

 suits, whose joint progress we are assembled to promote, are encour- 

 aged by our government and ourselves. 



Thus it is apparent how, in our country, and under our institutions, 

 these great interests, by mutual action, advance each other. And so that 

 duty before alluded to, results of balanced and impartial patronage. 



But the past imposes another work upon the present. And all im- 

 perfectly as I have discharged thus far the office which your faror, no 



